


(if you'll be my bodyguard) i can be your long-lost pal

by satellites (brella)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Police, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:37:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim and Garfield are buddy cops. Hijinks ensue, surprising no one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For [Annica](http://annicaspoon.tumblr.com), again, surprising no one.

Detective Timothy Drake of the Happy Harbor police force was a unit unto himself. He did not require looking after or coddling and he most certainly, one hundred percent, did not require a partner.   
  
“I have a surprise for you,” Unit Chief Mal Duncan said with a grin that was nothing short of shit-eating, his hands on his hips.   
  
“Please,” Tim replied through gritted teeth, “don’t let it be an _alive_ surprise.”   
  
Mal let out a guffaw that made Tim feel prepared to commit ritual suicide.  
  
“ _He_ should be here...” Mal glanced at the bland white clock over his desk and smirked. “In, oh, about ten minutes.”   
  
“Do you plan on explaining anything to me upfront, or am I going to have to figure out this _clear violation of every police code_ by myself?” Tim deadpanned, which only seemed to make Mal more amused.   
  
“Long story short?” He reached for his mug of coffee, sighing. Tim heard the big city traffic rolling by outside, two stories down. “Grayson figures it’s _high_ time you got yourself a—”  
  
“Don’t say it,” Tim warned him. “Don’t day the p-word.”   
  
“A... little buddy,” Mal revised tactfully, smirking. “And he’s one of our own. Sorta. New on the job but he’s a _barrel_ of laughs, trust me.”   
  
“I don’t need laughs,” Tim barked, his arms going petulantly akimbo. “I need peace and quiet and _no partners_ , ever, Mal; didn’t I make that clear?”   
  
“Now listen,” Mal retorted. Tim let out a huff at the severity crawling into his eyes. “You’d better buck up, son. You may be Commissioner Wayne’s prize pupil, but that doesn’t mean you can make your own rules. You’ve been on the force long enough that it’ll be good for you to get a little outside perspective, and this kid’s got a good heart.”   
  
“Does he have good aim?” Tim demanded.   
  
“That’s not all that matters, you know,” Mal grumbled. He looked up at the clock again. “Just give him a chance, Drake. Maybe you’ll learn from each other.”   
  
“I highly doubt that.” Tim sniffed. “So highly I’m getting vertigo.”   
  
“Don’t be a smartass.” Before Mal could make further false allegations against his integrity, Tim heard a knock at the closed glass door behind him. He and Mal both turned to it at the same time.   
  
Tim’s stomach dropped. Or maybe it sort of miserably sank; he couldn’t quite describe it.   
  
“Come in,” Mal half-sniggered, and the door slid open.   
  
In stepped Doctor Karen Beecher, their top forensic specialist, sporting her typical spotless white lab coat and no-nonsense expression. Tim shuddered – he could physically sense Mal waggling his eyebrows at her.   
  
But it wasn’t Beecher who concerned him – it was the young man in her company. He was shorter than Tim by a couple of inches, no doubt at least two years his junior, with a freckled face and rumpled auburn hair and a far too excited-looking grin. His eyes were an uncanny shade of green and his sleeves were rolled haphazardly up to the elbow, and Tim was fairly certain that he could discern dirt on his brown slacks.   
  
“You told me he wouldn’t be a minor,” Tim hissed to Mal.  
  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mal replied easily, clapping him on the shoulder and coming around from behind the desk.   
  
In passing, he patted Beecher’s bottom and she jumped, whacking him on the shoulder with her clipboard. He said something about it being worth the pain and Beecher retorted with something about appropriate workplace behavior (though her smirk betrayed her) and Tim averted his eyes, feeling his cheeks start to heat up.   
  
“Dear god,” he muttered to the ceiling. “Please let this be—”  
  
“Howdy, partner!” Suddenly there was a hand in his, shaking it vigorously, and Tim tried to leap away but was held firmly in place by the other grip. He stared with protuberant eyes at the newcomer, who was responsible for the assault, and who was beaming at him with enthusiasm. “Sorry, Duncan said you don’t like the p-word, but I figure I can drop it at least once on the first day!”  
  
“Let go, please,” Tim spluttered after a couple more failed attempts at escape.   
  
The newcomer released him immediately, his grin never faltering.   
  
“So you’re Timothy Drake?” he marvelled, sounding reverent. “Gee. You’re a lot more straight-laced in person.”   
  
“And you have to be the most unprofessional police officer I’ve ever met,” Tim retorted briskly, his eyes narrowed. “What’s your name, cadet?”  
  
“Oh, I’m not a cadet,” the newcomer corrected him gleefully. “I’m a deputy! _Your_ deputy! I’m Garfield Logan, call me Gar; it’s what all my buddies call me.”   
  
“We’re not buddies,” Tim said.   
  
“But we are,” Garfield argued, never losing the ebullient demeanor. “See, I’m not supposed to leave your side for at _least_ eight months. We’re a team now! This is gonna be great! We can be like buddy cops!”   
  
“Duncan,” Tim half-squawked. “If you’re done fondling Beecher, can we talk?”   
  
“In his dreams,” Beecher scoffed. “The – fondling part, in and of itself; not the being done part.”  
  
“That sounds to me like a Freudian slip, _Doctor_ Beecher,” Mal teased.  
  
“I’m leaving,” Beecher said dryly, giving him one more well-aimed smack to the shoulder. She turned a small smile in Garfield’s direction. “Good luck, Logan.”  
  
“Won’t need it!” Garfield replied with a thumbs-up before clapping Tim on the shoulder (entirely without Tim’s permission). “I’ve got my new best pal here!”   
  
Beecher smirked in a way that made Tim extraordinarily uncomfortable before slipping out the door, striding back toward the forensics department.   
  
“All right, boys,” Mal’s voice began, drawing Tim back to attention. He and Garfield both turned in unison to face Mal, back behind his desk again, as he raised an appraising eyebrow at them. “Let’s get started.”  
  
“Let’s,” Tim agreed, shouldering Garfield’s hand away.   
  
Mal cleared his throat before pulling a folder out from the drawer under (one of) his (many) laptop(s) and setting it on the surface of the desk in front of him, settling down into his chair. Tim and Garfield stood at attention, their arms straight at either side.   
  
“There’ve been rumors of a new drug being manufactured in Old Town,” Mal told them, folding his arms as he scanned the open file. “We managed to pull a sample from some junkie who’d been using, but he got away before we could process him. Detective Reyes is combing for him now, so that bit’s not your concern. What I want you boys to do is head over to that area today and ask around, see if you can find any dirt on this stuff. Its street name is MetaGene.”   
  
“MetaGene?” Tim muttered pensively, only to be interrupted by an elbow driving into his side.  
  
“Never metagene I didn’t like!” Garfield joked, nudging him still.   
  
Tim was ready, right then and there, within ten minutes of knowing Deputy Garfield Logan, to jump out the window and never look back.   
  
This was going to be a long, _long_ at-least-eight months. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The drive in the prowler to Old Town was, to Tim’s utter bewilderment, mostly silent. He’d been expecting some hackneyed series of questions intended to breed familiarity, or at least a little bit of badgering, but from the time they left the precinct, Logan just sat in the passenger seat, bouncing a little, watching the city crawl by.   
  
Old Town was rickety and just a bit greasy, and all of the buildings were dark. It had always reminded Tim a touch too much of Gotham City, his hometown, so crime-ridden it may as well have been a mule, as his father used to say. His stomach shivered a bit at the memory.   
  
“I think you missed it,” Logan suddenly exclaimed, startling Tim out of his ponderings.   
  
Tim jumped at the noise, which earned him an askance look, but shook off the rigidity and focused on the street.   
  
“I didn’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s the next one.”   
  
“Oh.” Logan blinked. “Hey, sorry for – uh, getting you on edge for a second there.”   
  
“I’m fine.” Tim took one hand off the wheel to readjust his black sunglasses. He didn’t see the point in saying much else but that.  
  
He tugged the wheel to the right and turned onto Sixteenth Street, the gateway to Old Town. It was a long, blackened avenue that stretched for several blocks, flanked by seedy-looking Victorian-type buildings and grubbily-dressed denizens.   
  
“Ah, Old Town,” Logan breathed cheerfully. “So stereotypically shady.”  
  
“That’s hardly appropriate,” Tim said crisply.   
  
“Yeah, I know it’s not _appropriate_ , but it’s true,” Logan replied with raised eyebrows. “So where’re we disembarking?”   
  
“About a block down,” Tim answered in the most clipped tones he could muster. “Where Reyes picked up the junkie. It’s in a moderately-populated alleyway between the bank and the shawarma restaurant.”   
  
“Good joint,” Logan commented. “Seriously, though? A junkie doing his business next to a _bank_? Who is this kid?”   
  
“This _kid_ ,” Tim huffed, slowing the car to let a woman with a shopping cart full of seemingly empty grocery bags pass by, “is Reyes’s age. We didn’t get a last name off of him, but Bartholomew’s the given. He’s not our concern, though; Reyes is dealing with him.”  
  
Logan nodded repeatedly as though absorbing it all with the enthusiasm of a bouncy green plant. Tim sighed and, when the alleyway detailed in the reports appeared in his peripheral, he deftly parallel parked beside it.   
  
Without waiting for Logan, he nudged open the car door and stepped out, keeping his back straight. He stopped in front of the entrance to the alley with his arms akimbo – there was bright, fresh yellow crime scene tape festooned between the two brick walls.   
  
“Sandsmark!” he yelled just as Logan appeared at his elbow. “What’s with the tape?”   
  
Several yards away, hunched over a garbage can, stood a young woman with a thick blonde ponytail and a black tank top that shamelessly showcased her muscular arms – Detective Cassandra Sandsmark. She had only just joined Duncan’s team the year prior, mostly out of, Tim suspected, an excessive need to ogle Lieutenant Grayson.   
  
She glanced up at Tim’s call and turned to face him, her bright red glasses catching the early afternoon light.   
  
“Sandsmark?” Logan repeated, frowning. “Who’s she?”   
  
“Homicide,” Tim replied, equally perplexed. “So either she’s got the wrong crime scene, or—”  
  
“Drake!” Sandsmark exclaimed, her face brightening before she jogged up to the other side of the tape. She halted in front of them, her hands jauntily on her hips, grinning with enthusiasm. “Thank god. I am _so_ bored out here; I’ve been digging through dumpsters since ten.”   
  
“Why’re you here?” Tim asked, straight-faced.  
  
Sandsmark’s smile just slightly faltered and her shoulders loosened. She sighed, blowing her bangs out of her face.   
  
“Because someone’s _dead_ , why else?” she said, sounding exasperated. “And totally not chaseable, which is probably why I’m ready to jump off a building from boredom.” Now the sunshine in her cheeks was altogether gone, replaced by severity that took Tim by surprise. “Unidentified victim, male, late thirties, about five feet from where Reyes picked up his new buddy this morning. I think we’re looking at an overdose.”    
  
“Overdose isn’t a homicide,” Tim interjected.   
  
“Yeah,” Logan agreed adamantly, desperately trying to shoehorn his way into the conversation.  
  
“Logan, please,” Tim said, sticking a tetchy finger in the air. “Sandsmark? Explain yourself.”   
  
“I just _did_ , you chuckleheads,” Sandsmark scoffed. “It’s an overdose, yeah, but the medical examiner’s saying at first glance that it’s pretty obvious it was injected by force.”   
  
“We aren’t chuckleheads,” Tim spluttered at the same time Logan beamed and said, “Chuckleheads; I like it!”   
  
Sandsmark rolled her eyes at the two of them in turn and threw her hands in the air.  
  
“The rest of this one’s on you guys,” she declared, ducking under the tape and striding briskly past them. “My motorcycle’s a block down. I’m gonna go back to the station and lift some weights.”   
  
“I don’t think that’s in the job description!” Tim shouted after her, but she was already out of earshot, walking rapidly down the sidewalk.   
  
When he turned away, it was to find Logan grinning toothily up at him, already halfway under the tape and frozen in waiting.   
  
“We’re _not_ homicide detectives, Logan!” Tim cried out, but Logan ignored him, slipping the rest of the way under the flimsy barrier. “This isn’t what we were sent here to investigate!”  
  
“Yeesh, live a little, Nancy Neurotic,” Logan chided him with a crookedly amused expression. “This’ll be our first case as buddies!”  
  
“We’re not buddies,” Tim said, lifting up the tape and ducking under it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT POLICE WORK EXCEPT FOR THE MASSIVE AMOUNT OF LEGIT KNOWLEDGE I HAVE GLEANED FROM REPEATED VIEWINGS OF _HOT FUZZ_. Which, honestly, is basically what a Tim-Gar buddycop AU would be anyway, honestly.


End file.
